Adaptively controlling an imaging system (200, 205) includes constructing model feature characteristics (105) of a process over time, determining parameters and commands (110) for controlling the imaging system for each state of the process, performing data acquisition (120) for the process, extracting current features (130) of the process from the acquired data, matching (135) the current features (130) with the model feature characteristics (105) to determine a state of the process (140), and controlling the data acquisition based on the state of the process to produce optimized data.